Böddeken military cemetery
The Böddeken military cemetery is a military cemetery in the East Westphalian town of Büren in North Rhine-Westphalia .
The cemetery is located in the "Valley of Peace" southwest of the Meinolfus Chapel in the Wewelsburg district . The Wewelsburg is four kilometers to the northwest.
At the beginning of 1945, towards the end of the Second World War , there were brief, heavy fighting in this area between troops of the Wehrmacht , Volkssturm and Waffen-SS on the one hand and the US Army . The German troops tried to prevent the Ruhr basin from closing .
The cemetery was inaugurated in August 1953 on the initiative of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge . 472 fallen soldiers are buried here, some of whom were reburied from other cemeteries. Others were reburied from graves outside cemeteries, where they were buried in early 1945. During the exhumations, many previously unknown dead were identified. Among the dead are also three Dutch people who were members of the Waffen SS . 13 dead from World War I are also in the cemetery. The valley was renamed "Valley of Peace".
On November 1, 1978, a memorial for the victims of National Socialism and the war was inaugurated in the memorial. In Wewelsburg, many people died in the Niederhagen concentration camp . That is why this memorial by the sculptor Josef Rikus from Paderborn is also known as the Wewelsburg memorial. The memorial consists of five stones made from Anröchter dolomite . The first stone bears the inscription "In memory of the victims of war and tyranny". The other stones are used to commemorate the victims of the so-called Reichskristallnacht , the escape and expulsion, the bombing war and the concentration camps .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mues, Willi: The great cauldron. A documentary about the end of the Second World War between Lippe and Ruhr / Sieg and Lenne. Erwitte, 1984
- ↑ a b Büren local history association
Web links
Coordinates: 51 ° 35 ′ 2.4 ″ N , 8 ° 40 ′ 12 ″ E